These are dark and bewildering days for Britain’s community of Good People, the ones who – insulated from material discomfort through large incomes and in many cases large inheritances – believe that everything can be accomplished simply by being kind and, further, by wearing one’s kindness as a badge which on the surface proclaims gentility and compassion but which, not very far below, is a polite voice insisting: ‘I am considerably richer than you, which is why I have these beliefs.’
These are the people who could not possibly vote Reform UK because it would be akin to having an avocado bathroom suite, or net curtains, or a bright-yellow Nissan Juke. They will tell you that their aversion to Reform is an expression of principle and decency, but it is actually a terror that the established order of things might be upturned if Nigel Farage and co ever got into power. Reform does not simply challenge the ‘major’ parties in the usual way of offering a subtle difference of emphasis – a few quid here on tax, a few quid less here on investment, women sometimes have cocks and sometimes do not. It instead offers an entirely different society, where the lazy and discredited tenets of the past 40 years are swiftly abolished in a kind of Doge-like frenzy, to massed cheering from those who always – deep down, at least – considered them otiose and downright harmful – harmful to the rapidly sinking country, harmful to the hard-up individual. For those of us who welcomed last week’s astonishing local election results, it was the start of what we might call a Reformation. Long overdue, too.
And so the Good People flail around, grabbing whatever they can hold on to as the waters rise around them. The first is that anybody who voted Reform is thick as mince. One of the first out of the blocks was a woman called Frances Hinde, who has an ‘MBE for services to the vulnerable’. She tweeted that Reform fared best in areas where people were less well-educated, with far fewer degrees kicking around. The implication being that Reform voters are kind of morlocks, educationally special needs knuckle-draggers. Well, Frankie – that approach worked well during the Brexit debates, didn’t it? The truth is that if you really cared about the vulnerable you would align yourself with Reform because it is supported by the least valued and most exploited and politically neglected people in society, i.e. the ones who most deserve your compassion. But that would be a bridge too far, no?
In any case, plenty of Reform voters are very well educated indeed. For instance, I would have voted for Farage et al last week and not only do I have a degree but I always get the 1 per cent question in Lee Mack’s The 1% Club. So shove that up your bien pensant fooffy-pipe, Frankie.
The next port of call in this flailing around is the wishful thinking that Reform will be exposed as charlatans who cannot run a whelk stall, let alone a council: given their inexperience, they will struggle to administer the councils they have won. Nope. I suspect the struggling over the next few years will be between the local council staff, supported by the government and trade unions, who wish to continue funding stupid and corrosive diversity, equality and inclusion initiatives and net-zero bollocks, while simultaneously breastfeeding the region’s skanks at enormous expense – instead of filling in the potholes and collecting the bloody bins – and the agents of the Reformation who want all of that to stop. I know whose side the ratepayers will be on in that little skirmish.
I would have voted for Farage and I always get the 1 per cent question in Lee Mack’s The 1% Club
You will also hear ‘far-right’ bandied about, more personal attacks on Farage himself – watch the BBC for this, especially the local news bulletins which are far more politically partisan than the national news programmes, particularly up here in the north-east. There will be an insistence, too, that a few council seats don’t add up to a hill of beans, all things considered and that things will be very different in a general election once Labour has got its mojo together. Au contraire – Reform UK’s advance is exponential, in that every advance it makes in the polls or in elections leads insuperably to a further advance as people realise, firstly, that Reform can win seats and that secondly, voting for them doesn’t mean that you are a Quran-burning fascist who keeps canisters of weedkiller in his basement. Just someone who believes that society has tilted too far in one direction these past 40 years and that it has been bad for the country, overall, as well as being terrible for the country’s indigenous people. Incidentally, Nigel, if you do have any Quran-burning fascists in the party, try to keep them off Question Time.
And Labour finding its mojo? Don’t hold your breath for that. The government has performed admirably on the foreign affairs stage and has made a few genuflections towards common sense when it comes to the trans rubbish and so on. But it has done so largely in order to court the voters in those Red Wall seats who, last week, expressed their view that this was nothing like nearly enough. What we might expect now from Labour is more of a retrenchment and a drift back to the left on lifestyle issues, so that the party might at least retain one or two seats in the university cities, instead of losing them to the Lib Dems and the Greens.
The next thing for Reform is to identify a very clear difference between the deserving poor and those who are on benefits because it is altogether an easier and more lucrative means of existence than working full time at an entry-level wage. There is nothing the hard-working poor resent more than their next door neighbours taking the piss – two cars, iPhones, giant TV, holidays – by lounging on benefits. That’s the next stage of the Reformation, please – and don’t worry what Frances Hinde thinks about it.
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